This year’s Entwickler Konferenz (EKON 29) will be held on October 27-29 in Dusseldorf, Germany. I will be presenting two sessions as well as a workshop. Visit the EKON website for more information about the conference and to register. The “Early Bird” discount ends soon! Looking forward to seeing you in Germany.
I will be presenting the following sessions:
Leveraging Runtime Type Information
Runtime Type Information (RTTI) has always been a core feature of Delphi. Unfortunately, the core RTTI interface is somewhat complex and limited. Today a more powerful and flexible RTTI framework exists that is even easier to use than the original. This session provides an overview of the original framework for context, but the primary focus is on leveraging the new framework’s capabilities with several examples including field inspection, method invocation, and custom attributes.
What’s New in KSVC 8
This year, Embarcadero released a major new version of the Konopka Signature VCL Controls (formerly Raize Components). Since acquiring the component library from Raize Software in 2015, there have been a few updates, but the library was starting to show its age. In response, last year Embarcadero partnered with Raize Software to assist with maintaining the Konopka Signature VCL Controls. This session covers all of the changes that have been made to the library: including significantly better High DPI support both at runtime and design-time; Improved support for VCL Styles, especially dark styles; and even support for the new 64-bit IDE. Plus there are loads of new features including all new custom image glyphs and bulit-in editors for quickly integrating the new images into your apps.
I will also be presenting a half-day workshop at the end of the conference:
Developing Effective User Interfaces
As software developers, we all know the importance of an application’s user interface, but all too often the user interface gets the least amount of attention. Many developers equate user interface design with graphics design, but an effective user interface has little to do with pretty icons and images. Instead, creating an effective user interface involves applying several key principles and guidelines during the development process.
This workshop dives into each of these principles and guidelines and demonstrates how they apply to virtually any type of application: desktop, mobile, web, etc. Plus, specific attention and examples will be given illustrating several design traps that developers often encounter, and how to avoid them. The workshop continues by diving deeper into common user interface challenges including: navigation, content layout, control types, user feedback, color and font choices, and more.
The workshop will conclude with a highly interactive section. Specifically, I will conduct live reviews of user interfaces submitted by attendees of the workshop. See firsthand how the rules and guidelines presented earlier are applied to real-world applications. In the process, you’ll learn the benefits of having someone else review your designs and discover new techniques for handling tricky UI situations. This is a great way to get a free user interface review, and reviewing actual interfaces created by attendees personalizes the session for the entire group and makes it much more effective.
To submit an interface to be considered for review during the class, please see my follow-up post, “How to Submit an Interface for Review at EKON 29”.